up, dude,” Demente’ said. He knew it was fighting words, but there was no watering down what Page had done. She would learn the hard way. When you worked for the Colombian cartel, you answered to the Ramirez brothers.
“Fuck you,” Mano growled. “I don’t care how ugly you are, I ain’t scared of you. You deal with your woman, and I’ll deal with mine.”
“Demente’ shrugged, “Just tellin’ ya like it is, bro.”
“I don’t need you to give me a fuckin’ life lesson on how the cartel rolls,” Mano stood his ground.
“Play nice girls, you’re both pretty,” Bounce laughed.
Mano jacked the sawed-off shotgun he was holding, and the sound of it cut through the air like a deadly warning. “Let’s get this party started before the wrong person gets hurt.”
Putting three killers in a room always brought out the playful side of dominant personalities. The men could rag each other, but for an outsider to do so meant instantaneous death. Just like a family, the boys might be fighting in the front yard, rolling around in the dirt and kickin up trouble, but when it was all said and done, these men would die for each other.
Mano threw the keys to Bounce. “It won’t be a kidnapping tonight, but I know how much you love the van.”
Mano grabbed a black duffel bag that had everything he would need to rescue his woman. He pushed the thoughts of her being too soft to kill from his mind. Antonio Wayne didn’t suffer fools. This was one time he couldn’t do Page’s dirty work for her. Everything in him wanted to kill for her, and he wondered if he’d be able to restrain his need to protect her. He knew tonight could be the death of them both if he didn’t handle things right.
Mano waited until they were on the road to fill the men in on details. They all knew it was where the devil was. Mistakes cost lives, and if anybody but El Loco died tonight, Antonio would have Page killed. She had fucked up royally, and Mano said a silent prayer to Malverde for the woman he loved. He pushed the morbid thoughts from his mind and filled the other men in on what was going on.
“The phone’s not tracking anymore.”
“El Loco found it,” Demente’ said.
“Exactly. He may have moved her by now.”
Mano hadn’t been able to sleep the night before. The twenty-four hours of mandated waiting so he could go get her had dragged on. Now, it was game time. There would be plenty of time for sleep.
Nobody wanted to say what they were thinking. If El Loco had moved the woman, they might never be able to find her.
The city lights gave way to darkened country roads and shadows that held the promise of danger.
“Pull down in here,” Mano said.
Bounce turned down the dirt road and turned off the lights, then slowed down so no dust would blow and give their location away. He parked. “What do we now, Mano?”
“We wait.”
Demente chuckled, “Spoken like a true Sicario.”
Chapter Thirty Seven
Roxanne stared at her husband. He was doing his best to ignore her, but that wasn’t going to happen. She’d make sure of it.
“What the hell crawled up your ass, woman?”
“You love to call me mentirosa—your little liar. You’re the liar, Antonio Wayne. Tadias deserves revenge for the death of his parents. You’re making that girl kill El Loco because she made a stupid decision. The right thing to do is call Tadias and have him meet those boys. He deserves to pull the trigger, not Page.”
Antonio looked up through hooded eyes. His wife stood in front of him with her arms crossed, glaring at him. She wasn’t going to back down. He stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankles as if he didn’t have a care in his world.
“And what do you suggest I do with a woman who purposely got kidnapped? And, by the way, you don’t know whom I want to kill who.” He shrugged, “Maybe I want Mano to kill El Loco. Maybe I want Page to kill El Loco.” He leaned towards her and glared, “Maybe I want you to kill him. Maybe…I’ll have ‘Mi Mentirosa’ tattooed on your body.”
Roxanne threw her hands up in exasperation, “I don’t know, Tony. You can’t string her up and spank her ass like you do me. Tell her you’ll put a fucking bullet in her head if she does some stupid shit like that again. Scare